April 10, 2013

William Pope.L's Pull! Asks Cleveland What Work Means to Us

For Immediate Release

Cleveland, OH, April 10, 2013—Renowned performance artist William Pope.L has a proposition for Cleveland: can we manually pull an 8-ton truck through the city for three days, as a testament to the power of shared labor?

From June 7-9, Pope.L and SPACES invite people across Cleveland to lend their voices and their bodies to Pull!, an ambitious city-wide community performance piece. Working in teams of 15, hundreds of Clevelanders are being asked to manually pull a truck for 25 miles, through the neighborhoods of North Collinwood, Glenville, University Circle, Hough, AsiaTown and downtown; to West Park, Clark-Fulton and Ohio City. Images collected from people across Cleveland about what work means to them will be projected from the back of the truck as it is pulled through the city.

Pull! is a show of strength that can only happen if thousands of people literally pull together in a huge act of shared commitment. Interested in being a part of this extraordinary group effort?

Sign Up to Pull! by May 20, 2013: http://www.spacesgallery.org/pull/sign-up
Submit Images for Pull! by April 30, 2013: http://www.spacesgallery.org/pull/images

At any Cleveland Public Library branch, hard copy images can be scanned and uploaded to the submission site free of charge.

At the heart of Pull! is a city-wide conversation about what work-or lack of stable work-means to Clevelanders. Join us at a community forum about jobs, job prospects, joblessness and opportunities for improving employment in Cleveland, on Thursday May 30:

Community Forum on Work
Thursday, May 30, 6:30-8:30 PM
Location TBA
With the Neighborhood Leadership Institute,
Neighborhood Connections and Policy Matters Ohio

Pull! will take place on June 7-9, 2013, as part of Present & Accounted: A Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Cleveland Performance Art Festival (1988 - 1999). More information is available at www.spacesgallery.org/project/pull.

Pull! is made possible by generous support from the 2012 Joyce Awards, the George Gund Foundation, the John P. Murphy Foundation, Neighborhood Connections and FORM, and is produced in partnership with the 25th Anniversary of the Cleveland Performing Arts Festival, the Beachland Ballroom, Berea Moving & Storage, City Rising Farm, the Cleveland Memory Project, the Cleveland Print Room, Cleveland Public Library, the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization, Famicos, Neighborhood Connections, the Neighborhood Leadership Institute, Northeast Shores, Ohio City Incorporated, Parade the Circle, Policy Matters Ohio and Tenable Security.

ARTIST BIO
William Pope.L is a visual and performance artist and educator. He has been making multi-disciplinary works since the 1970's, exhibiting internationally in New York, London, Los Angeles, Vienna, Montreal and Tokyo. In 2009, he was commissioned by Hauser & Wirth to create an installation in response to Kaprow's Yard. He participated in the New Museum's 2010 - 2011 exhibition The Last Newspaper, with a reenactment of his infamous Eating the Wall Street Journal performance. In 2011, Pope.L performed Blink in New Orleans, as part of the biennial Prospect2. Most recently, Pope.L's work was included in Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston.